The RIAA is asking universities to discipline students whom it claims are engaged in file-sharing. At Michigan State (a university I both attended and taught at), the head cyber-narc actually forces students to watch a vicious, deceptive video produced by the RIAA (I show this to my own students as an exercise in teaching them how intellectually dishonest the recording industry is). The idea that students should be forced by a state-funded school to watch promotional videos produced by a corporate consortium is an academic embarrassment on a scale far greater than any notional "piracy."
"They're trying to make a statement," said Randall Hall, who polices computers at Michigan State University, seventh on the list with 753 complaints. Michigan State received 432 such complaints in December alone, when students only attended classes for half the month.
Hall meets personally with students caught twice and forces them to watch an eight-minute anti-piracy DVD produced by the RIAA. A third-time offender can be suspended for a semester.
(via Lawgeek)
